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Everybody, I have an exciting announcement: yours truly is getting married!! That’s right! For the first time in about 3 years I’m going to have myself a work husband. So excited!!

There’s something so special about the relationship between work spouses. There’s a fine balance between friendship, intimacy (in a mostly non-sexual way), and professionalism (kind of). Your work spouse is the one who you know can keep a secret, who you give pep talks to when they’re feeling blue and who’ll do the same for you, the one who you trouble shoot with, and celebrate with when one of you has a win. They’re the ones you have secret exchanges with in meetings. Kind of like a work bestie – only with way more flirting.

In the past I had Disney and I had Folgers. I even had a boss with dreamy blue eyes who I was promoted above and then I made him sit next to me and we would distract each other from work for ages and now when I see him I want to climb in his lap and tell him to hold me. Actually, I wanted to do those things when we worked together. Alas, he was married. He still is. God damn it.

My new work husband, or maybe he’s a secret work husband since he doesn’t know about it yet, has just been hired. He wears pin striped suits with suspenders. He is funny and charming. He is sharp. We’re going to hit it off and soon we’ll be off at lunch excluding the other leader who has a shitty attitude about life. I can’t even wait!

He reminds me of Monsieur le Baguette a little bit. Only a bit more conservative and with dimples.

A real life boyfriend and a real life secret work husband. Both with dreamy eyes and charming personalities. What could possibly go wrong?

Those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile know that I’m dead inside. I don’t like feelings. I like to repress them or eat them (or write to you about them). I don’t like to express them and I abhor talking about them. What I dislike even more is dealing with a guy who has more feelings than I have. Deep down inside, I’m a horrible person. There comes a point where someone expresses too many feelings and my cold dead heart gets super annoyed. A guy wanting to talk about his feelings ad nauseam brings out my inner bitch. No likey the low self esteem. Yes, I totally suffer from low self esteem. I also have the common decency to not talk about it at the early stages of a relationship. It’s not cute. As it turns out, The Tutor is someone who suffers from Sensitive Guy Syndrome.

Earlier in the week I’d been messaging back and forth with him. He had some questions for me, and was dancing around. The dancing around was a bit annoying. I could tell he was interested in hearing about my past, but wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. Just ask the damn questions. As far as I’m concerned, the past is in the past. Based on the conversation we had, I discovered he is not a bonafide sex god. The Tutor is less experienced than I am, which is a bummer when the other option is #4 who would choke me if I let him. Whatever. He asked when was the last time I had kissed someone else, and the hot make out sesh with #4 on Monday night (still swooning even though he’s a douche bag) immediately popped into my head. “Within the last 2 weeks,” I responded. Technically this is true. He asked if I was still in touch with the guy, and I said yes. If you meet someone on the interwebs, more than likely they’re seeing other people – that’s the point. Then The Tutor asked me to do him a favor, if I decided that I was going to go out with #4 again to let him know because he’d probably tap out. I promised I would.

Friday night I went out with The Tutor for a 3rd time. He has a thing for airplanes so we decided it would be fun to meet at the airport for drinks. Because, why not? As I’ve previously mentioned, he’s a nice guy. One that I wasn’t deeply attracted to. He reminded me a bit of Disney who I used to work with at Investments r Us. Disney was my work husband for a few years, and totally not someone I’d ever want to bang. Like, ever. So the fact that The Tutor reminded me of him should have probably served as a red flag, but obviously it didn’t. The Tutor shows up in faded jeans that were too big for him and a leather jacket that could have fit the Incredible Hulk, I’ve never seen so much room in the arms of jacket before. He kind of looked like he was a little kid who had borrowed his dad’s clothes to play dress up. In the back of mind I said to myself, “I can work on the styling – don’t write him off for that.”

As we were having our drinks and dinner, he brought up how he was disappointed his life hadn’t turned out the way he thought it would. He had wanted a marriage, family, and a job he loved, and he had none of those things. He felt like somewhat of a failure and time was running out for him. I told him that I too had had a different vision of what my life would be, and that though it hadn’t, I was still able to find the joy in what I did have. He said he didn’t have any of that. We then spent half an hour talking about how he hated his job, how little money he made, and how he didn’t think he’d be making a career change any time soon.

I felt so sorry for him. Like so sad for him. He was basically stuck, without seeing a way out. Rather than thinking about the first steps he wanted to take to change his situation, he wallowed in it. He said that it was too hard to change. That’s a shitty place to be right there. Open to therapy? No, he’s not. One of my annoying habits is finding a silver lining to everything. Being with someone who spends most of their time being miserable is too draining, they suck the joy out of me. That vortex of darkness, so to speak, is also not a place where you want to start a relationship.

AND THEN when the check came, we went dutch. Date 3 was a 3 hour therapy session where I had to contribute to the payment to the therapist (me). Are you feeling your ovaries and heart beating right now? You thinking you might want to jump on him? Because I sure wasn’t. I would classify the evening as a relationship boner killer.

Kissing him at the end of the date was abysmal. Partly because of the technique, and partly because the whole night had been such of a downer.

My inner bitch thought about ghosting him, but I decided that was too cruel. I was a mature human being about it – there’s a first time for everything. Knowing suffers from Sensitive Guy Syndrome I thought long and hard of what to say, packed together a nice message, and off it went. I told him I didn’t want to waste his time and that I didn’t think I wanted the same things he did, and he still had time to find them. Go get ’em, Tiger. I’m sure the right person is out there for him. It’s just not going to be me.

The time has come to wish The Tutor fare thee well. On to the next one…

Most of us have one: a work spouse. It’s the guy or girl you hang out with at work and just seem to click with. Sometimes there’s a little undercurrent of a little something-something, but for the most part they provide a type of moral support for you. You may turn to them to bitch about your job, or your loved ones, or to get them to hold the door for you or maybe carry heavy things. The point isn’t too hook up at work, in fact, these relationships are supposed to be platonic. Otherwise a big fat mess ensues and
then you have to go through work couples counseling and may end up getting a work divorce. Then you have to figure out who gets the pantry and who gets the copy room. It’s freaking messy.

For many of the years I worked at Investments r Us Disney was my work spouse. He was there when I needed him and was always willing to sexually harass me when I was feeling fat. He was good like that. He never ever made a pass at me, though I don’t doubt if I had made a pass at him he would have probably gone along with it. I also don’t doubt that if his wife knew about half the stuff we talked about, she’d probably kick his ass twice and make him cry.

I can’t seem to find a decent man to date, but there are a bevy of work spouses from which to choose from. Office Adonis thought he was my work husband, I played along. Mainly because I didn’t have the heart to tell him if he wanted to be my work spouse we could never ever hook up. And since we did, the work marriage is null and void. I just haven’t told him yet.

Folgers is my work husband at Widgets & Co. We hit it off from the get go. I knew he had a little thing for me and he’s over stepped some bounds, but he’s never touched me. Though, again, I don’t doubt if I gave him any indication I was into him he’d be all over me like white on rice.

So here’s my question: if I can find a work spouse, why on God’s green earth can’t I find a normal unattached dude to date? Where are they all freaking hiding?

We have all seen the damaging effects of crack. As a Gen Xer I clearly remember Nancy Reagan appearing on a very special Different Strokes telling the nation to “just say no.” For some people, like Whitney Houston, that message fell on deaf ears.

Seems like the cafeteria lady also decided to ignore Nancy’s little message. This morning she was totally high. It took her 10 minutes to ring up my coffee. First she ignored us for five minutes while she tried to staple some receipts. If I didn’t know better I would have thought that it was her first time using one. She then rang up my coffee at the wring price, stared at me credit card, then back at the machine. To fix the issue she turned off the register and restarted it. Then she rang it up again only this time at $950. Um, that’s a very expensive. She stared at the register, and tried again.

Yesterday she apparently fell while she was ringing up a lunch order. She then told my girlfriend to just help herself to some change since the cash drawer was over.

As much as I miss my daily cafe runs with Foxy and Disney and all of the wonderful mocking, there’s just nothing that can compete with a cracked out cafeteria lady.

The last few days have been pretty shitty. My new dog, that I had for exactly 71 days, had to be put down last week. It was very rough, and very unexpected. He was a sweet boy but was very sick. By the time I got him, he didn’t have a fighting chance. As you can imagine, I’ve been spending a lot of time moping and crying off all my make up. In the last day or so, I’ve started to get back towards my normal self.

Yesterday afternoon I walked out with Disney as I do on most days. We decided to play this wonderful little game where we attempt to one up one another.

Catherinette: My dog is dead.

Disney: So is mine.

Catherinette: Well I have two dogs that are dead.

Disney: My mother is dead.

Catherinette: My dreams of a future with a husband and children are dead.